>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. >> The Library of Congress Junior Fellows program offers undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to work on projects with specialists at the world's largest and most comprehensive repository of human knowledge. Through the Junior Fellows program, the Library of Congress furthers its mission to increase access and awareness of its collections. Junior Fellows are exposed to a broad array of library work including: reference, conservation, digitization, cataloging, and collections processing. Fellows work with a broad range of materials and use their varied educational backgrounds to work with the collection in a wide array of fields. >> BETHANY: I work on the Yudin Collection and the Yudin Collection is the basis for the Russian language collection here at the Library of Congress. We acquired it in 1906 and there are round about 80,000 volumes in this collection. The breadth and depth that is covered within this collection is vast. We have a hand written card catalog. People who worked for Yudin sat down and wrote down every single book that he ever acquired. Neatly hand written. It really helps us out because then we can identify exactly what it is and if the item that we have is the Yudin item or not. >> ANASTASIA: I'm working with the Congressional Research Service with two analysts and I'm helping them compile a report on behavioral health issues among American Indians and Alaskan natives. I'm studying library and information science and I have an interest in both librarianship, but also research and I am particularly interested in indigenous systems of knowledge. And this report seemed like a really good fit and a utilization of both my interests and also research on a scale that I've never done before. >> GRAYSON: We are working with the popular applied graphic arts collection. Its scope includes pretty much anything that was produced for popular consumption, commercially. So, we have everything from decorative prints, chromolithographs, to advertisements and teaching aids. >> RYAN: This collection encompasses hundreds and hundreds of prints. So, in order to get through this, we first had to organize them, remove duplicate prints since many of them were submitted in pairs to the Copyright Office. And then prepare them in an organized fashion for the next step which is processing them and then recording data. >> SARA: So, with the recording data, we do it mostly on a computer in an Access database. What we do is record artist, publisher, the medium. And then if there are any special notes, we do the copyright information. And that will be used by the cataloger to make the record that most patrons will see and then it will go up online after it's been digitized. >> RYAN: I'm a political science major, so I've really been interested in some of the drawers that have had to do with the U.S. government, or the military, major sites in Washington DC. So, it's really interesting to see the holdings that you can find here at the library but not many other places in the United States or in the world. >> CAROL: My responsibility is to help digitize the Hebraic section's manuscript collections. So, we have approximately 225 manuscripts that we like to digitize and make accessible to both researchers and to the public. And so what I've been ding on a daily basis, is I've been scanning manuscripts one at a time and making them basically uploadable on to the Hebraic section website. This manuscript is called a khetuba and it's made on vellum. So a khetuba is an official marriage contract written in Hebrew and Aramaic. All of these manuscripts as well as the khetuba are all part of Jewish marriage ceremony in Italy during the early modern period into the nineteenth century. And I just really love seeing what's on every page and just all the intricate details. And so, it's been such a privilege working to be able to work with sometimes objects that are 200, 300, 500 years old. >> KATHERINE: I'm working on a project that involves cataloging photographic and photographic related samples and photography manuals from the nineteenth and twentieth century. So, what I've been doing is to locate these samples, to identify then in a database, to photograph them, and to also find other materials in these texts about the samples. Some of these things we kind of found and discovered just pulling books off the shelf in the general stacks and it's so amazing, what is back there. You don't know what you're going to find when you open up these things. It's totally mind-blowing. Really, I think that's the only way to describe it. So, get out there and explore in the areas you are interested in you will find rally, in many cases totally unique objects that you can't find anywhere else. >> Aside from their assigned projects, Junior Fellows also have a calendar of educational enrichment activities throughout the ten week program. Some of these include meeting the Acting Librarian of Congress and tours of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia. >> RYAN: Those are really interesting places because not even very many Library of Congress employees, unless you work there, not many get to tour. So, it was really neat to see inside the satellite facilities that are off limits to the public. >> The Junior Fellows program concludes with Display Day: an opportunity for Fellows to showcase their discoveries and accomplishments and answer questions from the Librarian of Congress and library staff, friends and family, and special guests including members of Congress. >> BETHANY: I have loved this program so much. I don't think I could have made a better choice for my Summer internship. I have done enough research within this collection that I am writing two articles to hopefully be published with the help of some of my supervisors. >> KATHERINE: One of the great things about doing this project is working with really wonderful conservators, especially my supervisor whose been a really wonderful mentor to me here - has helped me gain a much better knowledge of the chemistry and technical aspects of the production of photos, especially in the 19th century. And that's been really helpful. >> RYAN: When I hear the word, library, I thing books. But, the Library has a lot more than just books. So, it's really interesting to see the variety that go outside of what you might initially think of when you hear the word, library. >> SARA: You can walk up to anybody and ask what they're doing and they'll explain it to you or at least tell you what they're doing on a basic level and I really like that as somebody that's coming up in that kind of field. >> BETHANY: I would apply. You can't do a better internship for your library program, for your humanities program. This is the Library of Congress. It's the largest library in the world. How can you say no? This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc dot gov.